Word: pattered
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...lure of a PG-13 rating, Toback comes up with the Judy Blume version. Robert Downey (desperately charming) is a young man on the perpetual make; Ringwald (way too pouty) is his mysterious prey, willing to bet her future on a single game of blackjack. With its saucy patter, crisp editing and brazen sentimentality, The Pick-Up Artist is Toback's first conventional, sit-throughable picture. It is also his most negligible. No life or art is on the line here, just the career of a panther who wants to convince Hollywood he's a pussycat...
WHAT WAS not tremendous was the show biz gimmickry, from stupid patter about Jim and Tammy Bakker to the vastly overrated spinning song wheel. This business detracted from the music itself--and for no apparent purpose. It is strange that someone like Costello, generally acknowledged as one of the greatest lyricists in music, resorts to pat jokes about the Beastie Boys, CNN News and Oliver North. It's almost as if he wants to start a second career as Jay Leno...
...costumes were soon fit for a king -- King Frederick of Hollywood -- with their exotic plumes and freighted trains. He wore diamonds as big as the Ritz; his hair was not so much teased as taunted; his candelabra were large enough to light the Library of Congress reading room. The patter between numbers became bolder, dropping innuendos like anvils...
...prison. Planning their escape or simply getting to tolerate each other, they are three shaggy humans looking for a way out, and they communicate their anxiety through a kind of existential slapstick: Godot meets the Three Stooges. If you can get into the rhythms of Waits' disk-jockey patter, Benigni's fractured English and Lurie's sullen explosions, you may find Down by Law mildly ingratiating. Otherwise you will sympathize with the jailbirds as they mark off the days in their cell. The markings, of course, are gorgeous: Chinese calligraphy, bayou-style...
...real crowd-pleaser is Spike Lee himself as Mars Blackmon, the supersonic-mouthed, puny-limbed biker who 10-speeds directly into the camera at his first entrance. With big aviator frames, high tops, and an imposing, gold-plated "MARS" necklace, his mere presence inspires laughter. And his street-patter has proved to be contagious: Mars' stacatto delivery of "please, baby, please, baby, please, baby, baby-baby, please" is mimicked all over town. Some movie mavens have dubbed Lee the new Woody Allen and it's true--he saves all the best jokes for himself. But sweet, street-smart, and boastful...